From little girl to teen

One of the projects that kept my June particularly busy was a remodel of my daughter's room. She's 13 and it was time to change her little girl room into something a bit more grown up. We moved into this house when my daughter was just four. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the move and, well, we weren't opposed to bribery within reason. (smiles) We enticed her with a new outdoor playset (which was on the agenda anyhow) and a loft bed, which my husband actually built. We topped it all off with a four-wall mural "garden room". I painted the sky, grass, and picket fence myself and then had someone come in to paint the flowers. I snapped a couple of pictures before we completely cleared out the room for the remodel. At one time, the loft bed had a canvas enclosure, which I painted to look like a brick house, that wrapped around the bottom. A little purple couch was kept underneath and it made for the perfect reading spot. I must say, the room was adorable and the perfect little girl room!
And here are some pictures after all furniture was cleared, which better show the artwork on the walls.




While adorable, this room wasn't exactly suited for a teen. The first step was to sand the walls because some areas had up to six applications of paint. We sanded. And sanded. Then, we sanded some more. There was dust everywhere. I spackled some areas (then sanded again).
Then we primed the walls with three coats. The whole prep process took us several days. (Guess what? You can still see the picket fence bumps in the finished room. Argh! Oh, well.)

This picture of the post-sanding sort of sums up how I felt about the project....our little girl was fading away.

All is still bright though. Very bright! Bright green that is!
I used two shades of green, one wall a bit darker than the others. It took three coats of each color and the humidity really slowed the drying process down. The color scheme was selected after finding the perfect comforter to suit my daughter's personality.
The homemade loft bed went to our 4-year-old niece, who was thrilled. I sold my daughter's old dresser and desk on Craig's List. She has never had new furniture and we thought she should be able to pick her own items out for once. Here is the finished room!



To keep within our budget, we shopped mostly at Walmart and Ikea. The couch (Walmart) is a futon that folds out on the sides, creating an extra bed for overnight guests. The shelves, shag rug, and green pillows were Ikea purchases.
The bed (Walmart) has extra storage underneath...for books, of course! The end table was an $8 purchase (Ikea). What a bargain! I was unsure about the globe light (Ikea) my daughter selected, but it looked perfect on the end table and looked great with the circles on the comforter.
This bucket chair and mirror (both Walmart) were last-minute purchases that ended up filling a corner nicely. The mirror has a wipe-off marker - perfect for making notes while doing work at the desk sitting next to it.
The shelves, desk, and magnetic boards were all Ikea finds, with the white lamp coming from Walmart. The shelves to the right had been in the room previously, one of the two existing pieces. The other was a magazine rack that came from another room, that can be viewed sitting in the corner in one of the earlier photos.

I tested my seamstress abilities and sewed the curtains myself, a $40 total savings from the store-bought variety and made with better quality fabric as well.
Our final purchase was a 6-drawer black dresser from Ikea (visible next to the closet in a previous pic), which replaced an old wide white one.

It definitely doesn't look like a little girl's room anymore. While my daughter helped pick out some of the items, we remodeled everything while she was away a camp and she really didn't know what to expect, including the final wall color. I'm happy to say she loved it!